


to till a garden

by Tobiko



Category: Doom Patrol (TV)
Genre: F/M, Larry Trainor is a good, Platonic Soulmates, Rita just wants to be loved
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-01
Updated: 2021-01-01
Packaged: 2021-03-11 04:20:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,351
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28488972
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tobiko/pseuds/Tobiko
Summary: Rita would love to be the type of friend that Larry deserves. Larry gardens and Rita watches.
Relationships: Rita Farr & Larry Trainor
Comments: 6
Kudos: 29





	to till a garden

**Author's Note:**

  * For [red_b_rackham](https://archiveofourown.org/users/red_b_rackham/gifts).



> So sorry this is late! I wanted to make sure you got it. Late Yuletide 2020 gift.

Rita Farr did  _ not _ garden.

Rita didn’t get her hands dirty, that was not her job. She was a star. A star could hire someone to sully their hands in mud and mulch if she so chose. 

Rita had maintained a particularly well manicured garden and lawn in her three-bedroom home in the LA suburbs, but she didn’t actually  _ live _ there, let alone do the manual labor. She was too busy doing film shoots and lived her life hotel to hotel when on location and the other large portion of her time in her LA penthouse suite. The house was an investment as well as a backdrop for photoshoots when a particular project required her to appear more “American dream” for publicity. She had even once put on gardening gloves, pristine white with pale pink flowers decorating it, stiff and unused, for a photoshoot she had done for Look magazine. They’d been forced to take photos from the waist up because Rita had refused to kneel in the grass and had a large beach towel laid out. 

After her accident Rita had not changed her stance on gardening. It was work for the  _ help _ , not for those who could afford otherwise. Niles was able to afford gardeners to keep his lawn trimmed and presentable and that suited Rita just fine. She never saw them or any other hired help, keeping to her room if anyone was working in the house and venturing to the living room and laboratory spaces once she knew it was safe to emerge. Once she did emerge she would spend most of her days in front of the television set waiting for glimpses of people she knew or movies she recognized.

(It would, of course, take twenty odd years for her own movies to become easily accessible in home media. Once Niles was able to get her copies she would spend hours upon hours glued to the television.)

Back in the 50s it was somewhat harder to have television as a hobby due to the limitations of the medium. Rita  _ needed _ a hobby. She needed something to do that wasn’t just sitting or reading or watching the ceiling. Still, gardening never crossed her mind as an option.

Then Larry Trainor joined her in her den of solitude.

Larry arrived quietly and remained quiet. He tried not to bother anyone, tried to keep to himself in his own room. Rita had not judged; she understood more than most the curse of being different. Rita had foregone connections long ago, but her heart had betrayed her and gone out to Larry, the lonely man wrapped in magic bandages.

Larry had not been much better than Rita, at first, wandering the halls of the manor like a ghost. However it had taken him a lot less time to find the hobby that would keep him occupied for most of his new life.

Larry Trainor became a gardener.

At first, Rita could not  _ understand _ it. Gardening was dirty work, it was  _ women’s _ work. Who heard of a man planting flowers and treating them with such tenderness and care? Men were swarthy and rough, they couldn’t handle the delicate nature of a flower. And yet here was Larry, tending to his flowers with such love and care. He grew not just flowers, but succulents and vines and all sorts of small shrubs. He nursed their tears, plucked their dead leaves, tilled the soil with first clumsy hand and then expert precision.

It was a fair reflection of the man that Larry was, the way he cared so much for such small living things. A steady hand, a gentle touch, the patience of a saint. That’s how Larry was with his plants.

That’s how Larry was with Rita.

Rita knew she wasn’t the easiest to handle, at times. She was high strung and needed constant validation. People who weren’t being paid by her or directly impacted by her stardom tended to tire of her quickly. She had anticipated a similar response from Larry even with the manor only containing the three of them. Instead, Larry showed her the same amount of respect and kindness day to day, month to month, and then year to year. It was baffling.

Rita would sit on the porch sometimes as Larry tended to his plants. She would take her knitting, sunhat atop her head, and watch as Larry puttered around his pots and his boxes. His bandages somehow remained dirt free (though not clean, it was not entirely clear what exact property his bandages contained) but he often wore gardening gloves just to be sure. Niles offered to make Larry a greenhouse and he declined and then, strangely, he converted a little bus into a makeshift greenhouse with his own hands.

So Larry would garden and Rita would knit, days passing into years. Jane blew in and out of their lives like a hurricane of black clothing and lewd behavior. Cliff spent a long time in the basement learning to speak and move. For all intents and purposes, it was Larry and Rita and their gardening and knitting for a long, long while at Doom Manor.

Larry never asked Rita to garden with him. It was not an act of exclusion, rather an act of understanding. He knew that Rita would not,  _ could _ not, get down in the mud and manure and tend to a life. She was not capable of that level of patience (and perhaps not capable of that level of caring for a small living bud, she was not entirely sure herself).

Larry Trainor did not hold this against her.

They two would exist side by side in the quiet of their strange lives, understanding one another better than they had ever understood themselves, in a way that they had never expected.

.

Rita bought herself a pair of gardening gloves.

They were similar to the ones she had worn in her Look magazine photoshoot, white with little flowers, though these were blue and not pink. They sat in one of her drawers for over a year as Rita worked up the courage to ask Larry if he would like her help one day. 

The first day she came out with the gloves on she carefully picked her way over the lawn to Larry’s bus greenhouse and knocked on the glass door. 

“Would you like any help today?” Rita asked, gloved hands held up daintily and a show smile plastered onto her face.

Larry’s face was as inscrutable as ever hidden behind his bandages and stillness. “Do you want to?”

“Why yes! Look at my gloves.”

Larry didn’t say anything, waiting.

“Or… well… you love it so much. I imagine there must be something to it.”

“There is. Are you sure?” 

He waited as she fidgeted. She wanted to show him how much she appreciated his companionship, his patience, but the idea of sinking even gloved hands into dirt was mortifying, the idea of killing one of Larry’s precious little plants even worse. She did not have Larry’s patience, she did not have Larry’s care, though she wanted to more than anything

She wanted to be a worthy companion when he had given her so much.

“...perhaps you could show me some of your plants more closely?”

“Sure, Rita.” There was no judgement in his voice, no disappointment, and Rita felt relief tinged with a hint of shame that he knew her so well.

Larry spent the next two hours showing her plant after plant, telling her where to watch her step and mindful of the time. He finished before  _ As The World Turns _ started, but Rita could have listened to him for hours more. The shame melted away as she realized he enjoyed just talking, just having her listen to his words and his love for his plants.

“Can I make some suggestions?” Rita asked as she stepped down the bus stairs and peeled the unused gloves from her hands. 

She never got her hands into the muck and Larry never asked her to. She did, however, ever so enjoy trimming the bonsai tree.


End file.
